OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



porches, I venture to give upon the next page 

 a rough drawing of one of the plainest con- 

 ceivable. It is a sort of cross between the 

 Dutch stoop and the lumbering rooflet which in 

 old times overhung many a doorway of a New 

 England farm-house. It offers shelter and 

 rest ; it is in no way pretentious ; it declares its 

 character at a glance; you cannot laugh at it 

 for any air of assumption that it carries; you 

 can find no such shapen thing in any of the 

 architectural books. What then? Must it 

 needs be condemned for this reason? 



I do not, indeed, commend it for any beauty, 

 per se, but as being an honest, well-intended 

 shelter and resting-place, which could be 

 grafted upon many an old-style farm-house, 

 with bare door, and set off its barrenness, with 

 quaint, simple lines of hospitality, that would 

 add more to the real effect of the home than a 

 cumbrous series of joiner's arches of tenfold 

 its cost. In the door itself I have dropped a 

 hint of many an ancient door which confronts 

 the high-road in a score of New England vil- 

 ages. People do not instruct their carpenters 

 to build such doors now ; yet I can conceive of 

 worse ones, glazed up and down, with blue 

 and yellow and green glass, in most irritating 

 conjunction. I do not know that I would ab- 



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